Trump asked his ex-counsel to reject Mueller report findings
US President Donald Trump had asked his former White House counsel Don McGahn to publicly say he did not believe the president obstructed justice, a report says.
The White House had asked McGahn to speak out on two separate occasions; once before and once after the Justice Department released special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report in late March, according to ABC News.
Mueller, a former FBI director, had been examining since May 2017 whether Trump’s election campaign colluded with Moscow to try to influence the 2016 presidential election and whether the Republican president later unlawfully tried to obstruct his investigation.
McGahn's lawyer, William Burck, said in a statement, what Trump asked “was not a threat, rather it was a request, professionally and cordially made."
This comes as the Trump administration has instructed McGhan not to cooperate with congressional investigators after a subpoena was issued for his record.
On Tuesday, McGhan defied the congressional subpoena by refusing to provide the documents to the House Judiciary Committee.
“As you will appreciate, Mr. McGahn, as a former assistant to the president and the most senior attorney for the president in his official capacity, continues to owe certain duties and obligations to the President which he is not free to disregard,” wrote Burck then.
In the Russia report, McGhan recounted that the president had asked him to have Mueller fired on multiple occasions, but he refused and refused to lie about those conversations later, ABC News noted.
At the time, Trump said that he had not thought about dismissing Mueller. “I haven’t given it any thought,” Trump said when asked by a reporter about whether he wanted to fire Mueller.
However, he fired back after the Mueller report was released.
“I never told Don McGhan to fire Mueller, if I wanted to fire Mueller, I would have done it myself. It is very simple. I had the right to,” Trump told reporters at the White House on April 26.
US intelligence agencies claim Moscow meddled in the election with a campaign of email hacking and online propaganda aimed at sowing discord in the United States, hurting Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and helping Trump.
Both Trump and Russia have repeatedly denied the accusations. Trump has sought to discredit the investigation, calling it a “witch hunt” and accusing Mueller of conflicts of interest.
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